Lorain County Fair comes to close

WELLINGTON — The 162nd annual Lorain County Fair ended with a bang — and a large crowd — on Sunday.

Two big crowd pleasers — the combine derby and demo derby — brought out folks on Saturday and Sunday to watch farm machines and cars crash into each other.

But the crowd-pleasing demo derby wasn’t without its risks — in the third heat of the derby Sunday night, driver Rob Wallace was injured and loaded into an ambulance with the help of Wellington firefighters.

Wallace, representing Elyria Recycling, was in stable condition at Allen Community Hospital at about 10 p.m., according to a nursing supervisor. She said he was being evaluated, and she did not know if he would be admitted as a patient.

CARL SULLENBERGER/CHRONICLE

Cars collide in a heat of the demolition derby at the Lorain County Fair on Sunday.

Attendance figures for Sunday will be available today, said fair board secretary Juanita Wright. Rain — and the resulting mud — kept crowds low early in the week, she said.

But there was a big crowd on Saturday and a drop in the heat index Sunday helped convince people to come on down to Wellington, Wright said.

“I think we had more people (at the fair) today,” she said.

Through the sixth day this year, fair attendance stood at 93,657, while 134,148 attended all seven days in 2006, she said.

The biggest attendance in recent years occurred in 2000 when 143,611 attended, she said. Fair President Ron Pickworth said the biggest challenge this year was dealing with the rain as the fair got under way.

“We worked real hard trying to conquer the mud,” he said.

Wright said fair organizers also fought the slop by setting up bus caravans, which proved popular with fairgoers.

As for entertainment, Wright said she got a lot of positive comments about comedian Bill Engvall and singer LeAnn Rimes.

However, she said some folks still pine for The Beach Boys, who performed two years in a row. Others long for the return of Kenny Rogers, she said.

Now that the fair is over, Wright said everyone will rest for a while. Then they start talking again in October about what attractions will be at next year’s fair.